Anish Giri
Number of games in database: 861
Years covered: 2005 to 2015
Last FIDE rating: 2776(2674 rapid, 2757 blitz)
Overall record: +269 -101 =345 (61.7%)*
* Overall winning percentage = (wins+draws/2) / total games
Based on games in the database; may be incomplete.
146 exhibition games, odds games, etc. are excluded from this statistic.

GM Giri started playing chess at age 7, and a few years later won the Russian U12 championship. He gained his first GM norm by winning the Intomart GfK Open in Hilversum in 2008, his second GM norm at Groningen Chess Festival (2009) and his third GM norm title when he came second at the Corus (Group C) (2009) tournament, thus becoming the youngest Grand Master at the time in the world at the age of 14 years 7 months and 2 days. Furthermore he gained the GM title without acquiring an IM title first.

Giri plays for SK Turm Emsdetten in the German Bundesliga, and is apparently the youngest player to have participated in this very powerful league. In the 2012 European national club championship season, Giri's performances in the Bundesliga, and in the Dutch and Russian team competitions maintained par with his rating. However, he had a disastrous outing at the 13th European Individual Championship (2012), scoring 6.5/11 and shedding 27 points to push him below the 2700 rating level for the first time since breaching it. The FIDE Grand Prix London (2012) was the first in the six legs of the 2012-13 Grand Prix series; Giri participated as an AGON nominee but scored only 4/11, accumulating only 15 GP points that accrue to shared 10th and 11th place. Giri's second and third Grand Prix events, namely the FIDE Grand Prix Zug (2013) and the FIDE Grand Prix Beijing (2013), did not produce the desired outcomes eliminating him from contention for the top 2 needed to qualify for the Candidates via the Grand Prix series. At the end of 2012, he played top board for the Hoogoven team at the World Cities Team Championship (2012), and lead the team to victory in the final, thereby claiming the Sheikh Zayed Cup. The beginning of 2013 saw him play at the category 20 Tata Steel (2013), where he placed =8th, scoring 6/13, followed by =4th with 7.5/10 at the Reykjavik Open (2013), half a point behind the three co-leaders.

Giri played a combined rapid/blitz match against Vassily Ivanchuk at the 26th Leon Masters 2013. Giri won the 45 minute (G45) 2-game match with 1 win and 1 draw, and then took out the 4-game G20 rapid match with 3 wins and 1 draw. However, he decisively lost the blitz (G5) portion of the match by 2.5-7.5 (+1 -6 =3). Giri was declared the winner of the match as the slower games were given greater weighting than the blitz games. In August 2013, he was the decisive winner of the Norges Rafisklag Blitz 2013, winning with 10.5/11, 2.5 points clear of 2nd placed Daniil Dubov. In October 2013, Giri played first reserve for SOCAR in the European Club Cup (2013), winning individual silver and team bronze. He played top board for the Netherlands in the European Team Championship (2013), his team placing 11th. He also played top board for the Netherlands in the FIDE World Team Championship (2013), his team placing 6th in this event. He placed 2nd behind Levon Aronian with 6.5/11 in the category 20 Tata Steel (2014) event, and was the only player who was undefeated in the tournament. In August 2014, he represented the Netherlands on board 1 at the Chess Olympiad (2014), winning an individual bronze and leading his team to 12th in the event. Qualifying as the presidential nominee to the 2014-15 Grand Prix series portion of the 2016 World Championship cycle, Giri placed lone 9th at the FIDE Grand Prix Tashkent (2014), winning 40 Grand Prix points.

He placed =2nd at the Qatar Masters (2014) in November 2014 and in the following month, he was =1st alongside Kramnik at the London Chess Classic (2014). He was 2nd at the London Classic rapid play event with 8.5/10 and =4th at the London Chess Classic 2014 Elite Player Blitz. He started 2015 with a strong =2nd at the Tata Steel (2015) with 8.5/13, half a point behind the winner Magnus Carlsen, and behind Vachier-Lagrave on tiebreak to ultimately take 3rd position.

Giri assisted Viswanathan Anand in his World Championship title defence against Veselin Topalov in April 2010. He currently lives in Holland with his Nepalese father Sanjay Giri (a Research Scientist) and Russian mother, Olga Giri. Anish is a typical Hindu name used in parts of the countries of India and Nepal.

As of 1 February 2015, Giri's rating is 2797, making him the top player in the Netherlands and #5 player overall in the world. His FIDE rating in rapid is 2720 (world #30), and in blitz 2771 (world #13). He exited the Junior (U20) ranks on 1 January 2015, after being #1 Junior in the world continuously for 24 months from 1 January 2013 until the end of December 2014. He was also #1 Junior for the two months from 1 September 2011 until 31 October 2011, bringing the total period of his dominance of the Junior ranks to 26 months.

achieve: Thanks, <notyetagm> - I just now quickly played over the last three wins, and it was purely a joy to see his technique at work... It's so smooth and deft, sometimes brutal if needed.

As far as Giri not being inferior to Carlsen "talent-wise", I might hesitantly agree there, but Carlsen's fighting abilities and cool head OTB are imo superior to Giri's - <until now>... Hopefully Giri will be able to further develop on that over the next few years, also cutting out the short draws that are still popping up on occasion.

AuN1: it'll be interesting to see how the participants from this event perform in just one week at wijk aan zee. if giri continues playing the way he closed out this tournament he'll definitely be in the top three. i'm very excited to see how he does against guys like topalov, karjakin, kamsky, and radjabov.

Marvol: Congrats to my compatriot :). Great job by a soon-to-be great player! Top-ten surely must be his goal for 2012!

From his ratings compared to his age he seems similar in talent to Carlsen, I wonder how far he can take it. Somehow he seems to have been flying under the radar, with more attention given to So, LeQuang, and Caruana. Maybe now that will change.

(I was for instance piqued slightly by the comment on Chessbase 04 Jan that "the fans are ensured a race to the end between the two players [Nakamura and Morozevich]", this with Giri only 3 points behind. That showed little respect towards Giri, especially since Giri was playing Nakamura next round.)

It was an unusual ending to the tournament but for a winner to emerge, there must be losers. The fact that Giri was sufficiently skilled and cool to draw with Caruana, when his rivals managed to subsequently lose, has nothing to do with luck. They simply lost, and that's what happens in tournaments.

ooda: <twinlark:><There's very little luck in these contests, and certainly none here.>

I know what you're saying but when Naka fails to get a draw against an out of form Ivanchuk when that's all he's playing for <on the same day> that Moro is also unable to do the same against the weakest player in the tournament who basically got destroyed for the whole event; That is extremely flukey imo. Giri's luck is that this unlikely outcome occurred when it's probably like a 1/100 chance at best.

<And certainly none here> this comment makes me mad for some reason, the arrogance of it I guess.

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